Cell Phones in Prison: Jamming the Jails

Thursday

For years, inmates have been getting banned cell phones into prison, either smuggled or thrown over the wall. Some inmates then use the phones to organize and execute more crimes.

For years, inmates have been getting banned cell phones into prison, either smuggled or thrown over the wall. Some inmates then use the phones to organize and execute more crimes.

The simplest answer is to jam cell phone reception and transmission in jails. Plenty of states would like to do just that in some or all of their correctional facilities, but they face a problem: The Federal Communications Commission won't let them.

The FCC says only federal agencies can block cell phone signals, not state or local authorities. This week, correctional officials from 29 states petitioned the FCC to revise a 1934 law that bans interference with radio signals, including cell phones.

Twenty-six states were on the original petition; Ohio, Oregon and Texas joined in after the petition was filed. Sadly, the name of Walter McNeil, head of the Florida Department of Corrections, isn't among the petitioners.

Yet Florida has the problem as well. Just more than two weeks ago, a correctional officer at the Everglades Correctional Institution was arrested for drug trafficking, conspiracy to introduce drugs into a correctional facility and bribery after allegedly agreeing to smuggle two cell phones, one pound of marijuana and 4 ounces of cocaine into the facility.

During the past fiscal year, the Florida DOC confiscated 336 cell phones from Florida's prison population. Penalties for smuggling cell phone into Florida prisons were increased last year to a third-degree felony and up to five years in jail. Last year, Florida prison officials put the state's first cell-phone sniffing dog to work.

California, with the nation's largest prison system, confiscated more than 2,800 cell phones last year, reported Time magazine - double the number from 2007. One prison staff member admitted to earning more than $100,000 in a year's time by selling cell phones to inmates.

In case the FCC doesn't act, members of Congress are taking steps to change the law. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Maryland, is among those sponsoring legislation to change the law. "All across the country, cell phones are being smuggled into prisons and being used by inmates to communicate with criminals on the outside," she said. "Just more than two years ago, Carl Lackl, a young father of two in Maryland, was killed after an inmate used this cell phone to order a hit. This is not an isolated incident and it must stop."

THREAT TO PUBLIC SAFETY

Officials at the Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina last year uncovered inmates using cell phones to run an identify-theft operation. Last year, prison officials in that state confiscated more than 2,000 cell phones or cell phone parts.

That same year Jon Ozmint, director of South Carolina's Department of Corrections, demonstrated jamming technology to reporters at a prison by shutting down cell phones in an auditorium - but not the rooms around it. Ozmint told reporters that it's possible to confine the jamming signals so cell phones used by correctional officers will not be affected.

John Moriarty, the inspector general for the Texas prison system, said the need to change the law was "critical. The cell phones are the most immediate threat to public safety in Texas," he told the Houston Chronicle. "We've had a lot of crimes orchestrated over those phones."

The cell phone lobby is fighting the prison officials. John Walls of CTIA - The Wireless Association (formerly known as the Cellular Telephone Industries Association) told the Chronicle that jamming technology "is imprecise. The problem with jamming technology is that's it's imprecise."

He added: "We're certainly not at odds on the intent. There's not one legitimate customer that we have behind bars, and shutting that off is as much of a concern to the industry as anybody else. … Where we think that perhaps we could do a better job ... is by looking at all the solutions available today and selecting the ones that protect legitimate use while still solving the problem, and that would be cell detection and managed access."

Affecting legitimate cell phone use through overjamming is a possibility, but most full-scale prisons are fairly isolated. Jamming could be done there with little risk of blocking legitimate calls. Rules could be written to govern jamming at jails, work-release centers and other facilities within cities and close to homes and offices.

State prisons, whether by interpretation of current laws or passage of new ones, should be able to jam cell phone transmissions - and Florida's correctional officials should join the other 29 states in petitioning the FCC for the authority.

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